Quotes from Luc de Clapiers

The best things are the most common.

Courage is adversity's lamp.

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

If people did not compliment one another there would be little society.

Patience is the art of hoping.

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

Emotions have taught mankind to reason.

We must not be timid from a fear of committing faults: the greatest fault of all is to deprive oneself of experience.

Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.

If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.